medicine-bottles all gone, the night-table removed, the bed
stripped, the furniture set stiffly to rights, the windows up, the
room cold, stark, vacant--& you catch your breath & realize what has
happened.

Do you know that shock?

The man who has written a long book has that experience the morning
after he has revised it for the last time & sent it away to the
printer. He steps into his study at the hour established by the
habit of months--& he gets that little shock. All the litter &
confusion are gone. The piles of dusty reference-books are gone
from the chairs, the maps from the floor; the chaos of letters,
manuscripts, note-books, paper-knives, pipes, matches, photographs,
tobacco-jars, & cigar-boxes is gone from the writing-table, the
furniture is back where it used to be in the long-ago. The
housemaid, forbidden the place for five months, has been there &
tidied it up & scoured it clean & made it repellent & awful.

I stand here this morning contemplating this desolation, & I realize
that if I would bring back the spirit that made this hospital home-
like & pleasant to me I must restore the aids to lingering
dissolution to their wonted places & nurse another patient through
& send it forth for the last rites, With many or few to assist
there, as may happen; & that I will do.

CXC. STARTING ON THE LONG TRAIL. The tragedy of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson',
with its splendid illustrations by Louis Loeb, having finished its
course in the Century Magazine, had been issued by the American
Publishing Company. It proved not one of Mark Twain's great books, but
only one of his good books. From first to last it is interesting, and
there are strong situations and chapters finely written. The character
of Roxy is thoroughly alive, and her weird relationship with her
half-breed son is startling enough. There are not many situations in
fiction stronger than that where half-breed Tom sells his mother
down the river into slavery. The negro character is well drawn, of
course-Mark Twain could not write it less than well, but its realism
is hardly to be compared with similar matter in his other books--in Tom
Sawyer, for instance, or Huck Finn. With the exceptions of Tom, Roxy,
and Pudd'nhead the characters are slight. The Twins are mere bodiless
names that might have been eliminated altogether. The character of
Pudd'nhead Wilson is lovable and fine,